Recently, research focused on the study of the bases of psychosis has placed the accent on aberrant salience (Kapur, 2003). Likewise, it has been shown that the emotional systems proposed by Gray (1982), related to sensitivity to punishment and sensitivity to reward, influence the development of various psychopathologies. The role of these systems in psychosis has hardly been investigated. The objective of this work was to study the mediating role of sensitivity to punishment and sensitivity to reward in the relationship between aberrant salience and positive symptomatology, understood as ideas of reference, persecutory ideas and hallucinatory propensity in a sample composed of 259 students of the University of Seville (Spain). The results showed a partial mediation of the sensitivity to punishment and the sensitivity to reward in the mediation model of the ideas of reference, as well as a partial mediation of the SR in the model of the hallucinatory propensity. However, no mediation was observed neither of the sensitivity to punishment nor of the sensitivity to reward in the persecutory ideas model. According to these results, it seems that the sensitivity to punishment and sensitivity to reward are basic characteristics of the personality that could influence the development of some positive symptoms, and therefore, of psychosis.

Gray, J.A. (1982). Précis of The Neuropsychology of Anxiety: An Enquiry into the Functions of the Septo-hippocampal System. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, 469-534. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00013066

Gray, J. A. y McNaughton, N. (2000). The Neuropsychology of Anxiety. An Enquiry into the Functions of the Septo-Hippocampal System (2ª ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Kapur, S. (2003). Psychosis as a State of Aberrant Salience: A Framework Linking Biology, Phenomenology, and Pharmacology in Schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.160.1.13

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